Regardless of the aforesaid, my opinion is that if a person was promised a warden when they first moved into Sheltered Housing then a contract was formed at that point. It does not have to be written an ‘implied contract’ can be just as binding . To unilaterally withdraw a contract calls for a legal response, together with demands for reinstatement and damages for breach of contract

Kind regards

Vernon J Yarker
Chairman
The Sheltered Housing UK Association
http://www.shelteredhousinguk.com
mailbox@shelteredhousinguk.com

I guess I would say that, firstly, there are options other than restructuring – giving less to consultants would be one (from my own time in local government, I remember figures in the region of £200,000 for change management programmes, etc. Barnet has apparently spent several hundred thousands pounds on consultancy on its future shape proposals – easily enough to at least partially preserve the sheltered warden scheme if you want to think of it that way. Those sorts of figures go on and on).

Secondly, when management restructures, it generally does so to the detriment of the service and the people lower down the hierarchy – the cleaners, careworkers, housing officers, etc, who actually provide the service. Management certainly doesn’t restructure itself out of a job – at one of the councils I worked at, for example, the number of people earning more than £50,000 had doubled in the previous five years or so. I think you’re right when you say the issue is one of political will. Perhaps as the recession bites, and public services get scarcer – it seems very likely that Cameron will cut public sector funding, and impossible to believe that public sector cuts won’t be a consequence of the banking bailout for whomever is next in government – a closer look will be taken at council priorities and budget allocation.

A huge problem with sheltered housing and social services is that the numbers of older people are increasing. To continue with a similar provision would require more money, which would need more than a few cuts in ‘PC’ schemes to fund. Unfortunately councils have frequently shown themselves incompetent to manage the funds they’re given, and the public are unwilling to pay higher taxes. This just leaves management the option of ‘restructuring’. So sevices are cut and people lose their jobs.

Etc.

Does my head in.

I think the EU leans a bit more heavily on postal service privatisation which is why I used that example specifically. But you are right, that incentives might play a role too (or the idea of “best practice” devised centrally). In such cases, local opposition might be able to make greater headway but if the incentives are always pushing towards a particular model, then all local democratic movements will have an uphill battle to oppose it. Of course, I am, in principle, favourable to more private provision anyway. But I am always suspicious of state-led privatisation plans which rarely seem genuinely to be interested in empowering consumers.

And yet, at the same time, they can afford to fund an “Equality Watch Team” .

In fact, they must do so because otherwise they would not be able to comply with the statutory requirement from Central Government to carry out Equality Impact Assessments throughout the region.

I’m telling you, it’s not Orwellian, it’s fucking Kafkaesque.

Hopefully someone can clarify that as I’m a bit hazy on it.

http://shelteredhousinguk.com/page14/page14.html

Questions have also been raised in Kate’s blog about what Floating Support does and the above link will help provide some of the information that readers seek

Sincerely

Vernon J Yarker
Chairman
The Sheltered Housing UK Association
http://www.shelteredhousinguk.com

Found your last line interesting, though – it is certainly true that protestors often don’t realise exactly who is responsible for their problems – but surely protest can achieve more than bemusement? The refinery workers who went out earlier this year appeared to, and there is some evidence that protest AND presentation of service provision alternatives has beaten privatisation plans – Newcastle staff managed to keep IT services inhouse after presenting council with an alternative plan, and Bristol staff and unions did the same with care services. I don’t know if that means privatisation is obligatory under EU law (someone may have more information on this – I do know tender law for public sector contracts is covered by EU law) – what it may mean is that there are incentives to privatise.

It is a rather similar situation with post offices. I see campaigns being launched from sites like these all the time campaigning to stop post office privitisation. But, so far as I understand it, some sort of privitisation is now obligatory under EU law, meaning that campaigning to parliament about it is just gonna produce some bemusement and little more.

Barnet council – as it would – claims it’s being squeezed by worsening settlements from a Labour government.

That doesn’t change the fact that the council ill-advisedly invested – and lost, at least thus far – nearly £30m in Iceland, or that it has chosen to spend hundreds and thousands of pounds on consultancy and support as it draws up models for its future shape outsourcing programme.

Asking extremely vulnerable people like sheltered housing residents to make a contribution of nearly £1m to at £12m shortfall starts looking like poor prioritisation in those contexts. Is it – (and this is the question sheltered housing residents were asking when I talked to them) – a question of budgets being impossibly tight, or of other priorities being found for money? People who have been reading stories about moats and duckhouses are not inclined to easily accept the arguments that budgets are tight all round.

Re: floating service – the point I was really trying to make there was about the reluctance of the council guy to explain how Barnet’s version of a floating service for these residents would work.

http://www.barnet-today.co.uk/tn/News.cfm?id=7801&headline=Councillor%20targeting%20OAP%20homesâ??%20wardens%20denies%20impropriety%20on%20mumâ??s%20move